"The game is essentially a port of the PlayStation 2 version,"

No, it doesn't work with Guitar Hero controllers.  The PS2 version does.  Oh, and it's $10 more than the PS2 version.

No sell for me.  And you guys know how much I eat up accessories like this.

I'm just going to echo this.  One would hope the Wii's success would mean no more half assed ports, but I guess not.  It's bad enough for a game that doesn't come with tons of proprietary plastic controllers.  No DLC I can understand (for a 3rd party), but no online multiplayer?  At all?  Even with friend codes?  Ugh.

so should i give in and just get GH3 instead of waiting for this garbage port?

I know the song play lists have alot of the same songs so the only reason i would of gotten this over GH was the multiple instruments but if i cant play online then its really not worth it. Its rare that i'll have friends who'd play come over so playing with someone online is a key feature in a game like this, but they blew it. The sad thing is that if people dont buy this, it wont give Harmonix a reason to try to build a RB2 from the ground up for Wii..

"No DLC I can understand (for a 3rd party)"
Hudson's WiiWare karaoke game has pay DLC, don't even give them that excuse.  Why are they're so many apologists for third parties around here, it's disgusting.

The lack of DLC is what kills this for me, that and it not working with the GHIII guitar. I put up with it with GH III because we had no idea what Nintendo would go along with or anything, but now Nintendo has a concrete plan in place for DLC and there will be Wii games with DLC before Rock Band comes out. Harmonix says the Wii needs a hard drive to store the DLC, but as much as I want Nintendo to give me a hard drive I have to call that out as BS. Brawl has things you can download (stages), load onto an SD card, and play them directly from the SD card, there's no reason they couldn't use the SD slot for Rock Band. In short, Harmonix can go to hell, and when does Guitar Hero IV come out?

I was super-excited to hear that RockBand was coming to Wii. Now that details are coming to light, there are three things that are absolutely killing this for me...

1) Price. I'm gonna become known as a penny-pincher if this keeps up. I just complained about Wii Fit's price, and now I have to do the same for RB. Apparently it costs two and half billion dollars, plus your first-born child...'s first week's worth of pay (once they're old enough to work).
2) No DLC*. That's half the fun, and can extend the life of the game virtually indefinitely. A friend of mine has this for the 360, and it's like Christmas every week when the new stuff is released. I don't know why Harmonix wants to say no to money.
3) No online. Yeah, um, what? Sheesh. Lazy/stupid port from the PS2, no thanks!

* ok, I guess this could change at some point... at which point I may overlook my other two points and pick this up.

Don't forget!  To add insult to injury, the five "exclusive" songs in the Wii version are actually just songs that the 360/PS3 version have had as DLC for months.  Oh, and you can't create a band.

Everything about this is a slap in the face to Wii owners.  The tragedy is that lots of people will probably buy it anyway just because they don't have the other consoles, and this will reinforce the belief that less-than-half-assed PS2 ports are acceptable as Wii games.

You forgot one thing...NO CREATE A CHARACTER MODE!

Seriously, I thought this was one of the best parts of the game. I could deal with no online or DLC, but remove a great feature from the game? Phail.

Screw creating a character or online play. All I want is the DLC for expandable karaoke.

... I guess all I really want is a karaoke machine, HAH!

I hope nobody supports this overpriced Mega CD gameplay crap, I really do.

Yeah, I'm wondering about the no Create-a-Character mode as well.  Obviously, the create-a-character mode can fit onto a DVD (as the 360 and Wii use the same media).  Ideally, if programmed well enough, Saved Characters shouldn't take up that much space (how many Miis can you fit on your Wii's tiny memory?)...  Harminox made a half-assed port and they want to blame Nintendo for their failure.

Then, if it doesn't sell well, it'll be their excuse not to make games for the Wii in the future.

why dont us gamers get together and hold a protest at their head offices?

THIS POST HAS BEEN CENSORED FOR YOUR PROTECTION

--Bureau of Internet Morality

After buying a PS2 for Fire Pro Wrestling Returns I now realize I have no need to buy any third party Wii games at all.  The only Wii third party game I own is MLB Power Pros and guess what?  It's also on the PS2 so if I had bought a PS2 a few months earlier I could have got that version.  I actually feel like a bit of a chump having it on the Wii now.

Everyone who defended Nintendo going weak sauce on the specs can bite me.  It has completely f*cked Wii third party support and after this long I think it's clear it's NEVER GOING TO CHANGE.  The Wii can sell a bazillion consoles but it might as well be another N64 or Gamecube because once again the first party games are practically the only thing worth a damn.

If Nintendo had made a more powerful console it would have been more expensive and because of that not sold as well and it wouldn't be in first place. There was no way for Nintendo to do it. There are plenty of third party Wii games that aren't on the PS2, of the 13 third party Wii games I own over half of them are Wii exclusive and one of them that's not, Resident Evil 4, is most certainly better on the Wii than it is anywhere else.

The Godfather on Wii pwns all other versions as well.

Yeah, Ian. That's why the Wii is getting an exclusive from THE GUY WHO MADE PARAPPA THE RAPPER, the ONE GAME I most envied PLAYSTATION OWNERS for.

THIS POST HAS BEEN CENSORED FOR YOUR PROTECTION

--Bureau of Internet Morality

I personally don't care if Nintendo is in first place or not.  If they don't have the third party support being first place means jack to me.  Though obviously it's good for Nintendo.

It's all easier to speculate in hindsight but did the price have that much of an effect or was Wii Sports just such a cool idea that people ate it up?  I mean you STILL can't buy a Wii off the shelf.  It's a luxury item that requires some serious effort from those that want one.  There's no "impulse buy" appeal because you can never buy it on impulse.  You need a plan.  And that suggests that maybe the price is insignificant.  If you're going to drive all over town or camp out in front of store or pay high prices on eBay to get your kid a Wii for Christmas an extra hundred bucks to the price doesn't mean sh!t.  The Wii is something people just gotta have.  The iPod is the same way and those things are expensive.

Now Nintendo can't exactly predict the future so they probably thought the price would be important.  But then I recall a bit of controversy on these forums when it was revealed that not only was Nintendo skimping on the hardware but MAKING A PROFIT FROM IT.  Now I don't want Nintendo to take a loss on the hardware but they could at least break even.  The traditional model is to make the profit off the games and try to cut down the hardware cost to get the machine in people's homes.

Plus Nintendo talks about cost and then busts out $90 Wii Fit.  And has the most expensive controller ever.  That they sell in two seperate parts.  And then there's also the classic controller so Nintendo not only made a console with expensive controllers but also made two different controller standards.  Sell everyone eight controllers instead of four.  Raping our wallet on controllers doesn't seem to be a problem but the console that they make a nice profit on has to have a low price?  They skimped on the hardware so they could make that profit on the hardware.  They could have made the console cheaper for the consumer or could have kept the same price with better hardware but they didn't because as always Nintendo has to skim that extra few bucks off everything they can.  And now they're in first place but the third party support sucks.

The thing relies a whole lot on rubes not knowing better.  It's a bubble that will pop the second the userbase realizes the game lineup is the drizzling sh!ts.  Maybe Nintendo can keep it going long enough that we reach the next generation first, giving Nintendo the opportunity to fix things on their next console.  But this is a big problem.  Third parties releasing half-assed horsesh!t to a userbase they think will buy anything is exactly what crashed the whole console industry in the first place.  I don't think Nintendo intended for third parties to abuse the Wii in this way but they've got to figure out some way to fix it.

Ian, you're 100% wrong.  The Wii has proven it can handle similar DLC (Hudson's Karaoke game). The Wii has proven it can directly load data from an SD card to use during game play (Excite Truck loading MP3s, Brawl). The Wii has proven it can handle online play for similar games (Guitar Hero 3). The Wii has proven it can handle custom character creation (Miis).

Now, granted, EA/Harminox probably went lazy and ported the PS2 version instead of the PS3/360 versions because the Wii is "gimped" and it is easier to port up than port down.  However, it was, quite frankly, done this way because it was easier.  EA wanted the game out on Wii ASAP, so they went the fastest, easiest route to get it out.

It has next to nothing to do with the power of the Wii. Wii has above-standard ports of other PS2 and 360 games from other publishers.

It's no wonder Take2 doesn't want to sell to EA.

You have to admit Ian, this is a wonderful problem to have compared to N64 and Gamecube third party support. Plenty of room for improvement, everyone can agree. But GOD it's a HUGE improvement over what we had before.

Controllers = Horse armor confirmed.

So the Wii is capable of having decent ports IF the third party takes the time to put a huge load of effort into it, that they don't have to do when porting between the other two consoles.  Technically the N64's cartridge format didn't HAVE to gimp it's third party support.  Resident Evil 2 provided that it could be possible to port Playstation games to the N64.  But that didn't help at all because I think it's well established that third parties will not put in extra effort if they don't feel they need to.  90% of the time they'll either put in a half-assed effort if it sells and just plain don't provide support if it doesn't.  I think that sucks and is really not how things should work but sadly that's reality.  After ten years of third parties doing this to Nintendo you would hope they would have figured that out.

The Wii is more than capable of having decent third party games being made for it.  The hardware is probably good enough for most ideas.  But if you give third parties the excuse to be lazy f*cks they will always do it.  To gain an advantage your console has to offer what the competition has plus more.  The more was the remote but by gimping the hardware it was just a tradeoff.  Instead of better it's just different and in a competition of three consoles being the oddball is a disadvantage in attracting third party support.  The Wii userbase has to not just be significantly larger than the Xbox 360's or PS3's but both of them combined.  Releasing an exclusive or basing a multi-platform game on the Wii has to be more beneficial than releasing a game for the PS3 and the X360.  There are three consoles but in a way only two formats.  Nintendo needs to have the more popular format.

I don't think so.  At best it's exactly the same.  If a really great third party game is annouced it can be assumed that it's for every console BUT the Wii, just like how last gen it could be assumed it was for every console BUT the Gamecube.  Considering the Wii is in first and thus SHOULD be getting the best support it's arguably worse because it's more frustrating.  The problem with the Gamecube (ie: not selling) was fixed but then some NEW problem (or arguably a variation of the N64 problem) has ruined things.  Maybe it's just after over 10 years I'm just so sick of it I don't have any patience anymore.

The problem does seem way more fixable than before but the Wii has been number one for a while now.  Things have not really changed at all so I'm doubtful they will.

Hell why is Rock Band even coming out this late in the first place?  Shouldn't the number one console be a high priority?  It's not like when Rock Band came out the Wii was some obscure console that no one thought was going anywhere.  It was the big ticket item at Christmas and yet the big ticket game wasn't on it!  Huh?

I feel your pain Ian I really do, but the difference is as of now 3rd parties are shifitng their focus onto the Wii and at the time of it's release they hadn't seen any proof that it would become such a success. Even the early success was shrugged off as a fad and it was largley believed the second year PS3 would catch up and surpass Wii. Now that time has passed and it didn't happen the companies HAVE to shift focus. But if you look at the games coming this year alone, it is a vast improvement over the GameCubes second year.

Just give it some more time. I honestly think that things will be so much better by the end of the summer everyone will finally stop their bitching. Now if next Christmas Wii is still as scares as it has been and the 3rd party support stays as it has been, then we can goto NOA HQ and start lynching the dumb ****'s for their arrogance. Until then be patient cuz right now the Wii still has some pretty good games.

You have to keep things in perspective.

"Considering the Wii is in first and thus SHOULD be getting the best support"

Considering how long it takes 3rd parties to make "major" games, it's obvious the support just wasn't there.  Look at the reasoning behind Rock Band's multiplatform planning and then its late-to-the-game Wii port planning (Wii was NEVER in the pipeline.  EA is just in the porting mood).  Look at how GTA4 is JUST coming out, and MGS4 isn't even out yet.  The support for Wii as the "leader" won't be apparent for another year, at least.  But hey, at least smaller projects have been able to slip through; the next Tales game is shooting for Sept 2008 release in the west.

"Maybe it's just after over 10 years I'm just so sick of it I don't have any patience anymore"

Come back next generation, if there is one.

I think the shoddy port of Rock Band serves as proof that third parties are still catching up after the Wii's unprecedented success.  They rushed it out because there wasn't time to do it "right" in the window between finding out that ignoring the Wii was a mistake and the game fading from public thought.  It's not laziness in this case, but impatience.

Of course, that doesn't mean I'll overlook the shoddiness of the port.  I may buy this if they come up with a way to get downloadable content to work.  Nintendo's decision to make such purchases happen in-game instead of in the Shop Channel is a pretty big hurdle, unfortunately.  Apparently, this game and Guitar Hero 3 were both programmed to look for new songs in the Wii's storage (or else comments that they were still trying to work something out with Nintendo would be sheer nonsense), so a system to put songs there is all that's needed.  They could offer a channel for free in the Wii Shop Channel that facilitates things.

Yeah, EA and Harmonix confirmed that one of the reasons Rock Band Wii didn't happen sooner was because they were still dubious of the system's success and waited till the last minute to port it over.

Just go back and look at the original Playstation 1 and compare that to Wii in it's first year. Then come back and put things into perspective.

PS1 had Toshinden, Wii had nothing, so the comparison falls apart.

MK:Armageddon begs to differ.

Wait, wait, wait... this is how you try to convince me that it's Nintendo's fault that the Wii doesn't get good games?  Telling me how "lazy" and "half-assed" third parties are?  Somehow, I'm just not convinced...

So... are you from an alternate universe where the original XBox beat out the PlayStation 2?  What's it like there?

I don't mean "if your hardware is better you win".  I mean that if you want to attract third party support away from a console to yours you need to give them an incentive.  Being different isn't going to cut it.  The Playstation was able to attract third party support away from Nintendo because it provided a big incentive by using CDs that held more and cost way less.  However it still had comparable 3D capabilities so it wasn't too much of a tradeoff.

But there was plenty of incentive to go to the original XBox over the PS2.  More powerful system, better online component, 4-player controls built in, cheaper royalties, PC-Portability, Hard Drive, etc., etc...

Fixed.